The Heretofore Un-tolled History of The Independent Republic of Harvey Markson

Ah, the vagaries of fortune… “The Street is nothing more than a feast of hope. When the stock market charges ahead, everybody hopes to make a killing. When it starts to tumble, they pray to God not to get killed.” Thus spake Rupert Haldane Winkes, the cerebral, almost scholarly, founder of Winkes & Associates, Bay Street’s most respected investment manager. But when he swerved his Volvo to avoid a white-tailed deer one dark night, “the omniscient, omnipotent Rupert Haldane Winkes slipped into non-existence.” Immediately the barbarians invade. In the wake of this untimely death, Rupert’s young partner, Harvey, finds his stable, comfortably affluent world disintegrating around his well-shod heels, as Rupert’s bastion of intelligence and integrity is assailed by avarice and incompetence. Harvey begins to feel that he has more in common with Segovia, the homeless man who strums a stringless guitar at the foot of the city’s costliest real estate, than he does with the firm’s new CEO, Leon Kelpner, periodontist-cum-venture capitalist. As the illusion of a secure universe built on career success crumbles, Harvey must find not only a new place to call home but also a new way of being in the world. He must search within himself for the faith he’ll need to build in a new kind of freedom and to face the inevitable, unforeseen changes it brings. From the cold heart of Toronto’s financial district to the old world charm of London, Paris and Rome, this satirical romp takes a deliciously mordant view of the world of high finance. Peopled with unforgettable characters like Eldred “Piggy” Donnis, the boorish bully and egomaniacal magnate of Mammon, Harvey’s insouciant friend and confidant, Zygmunt Adams, the beautiful ice queen, Katherine the Ingrate, and Bay Street’s most pretentious tightwads, Roi and Ferdy Swasont—not to mention a know-it-all narrator—this everyman tale will delight and entertain with its irreverent wit and humour. Put down Heidegger’s Being and Time and pick up The Independent Republic of Harvey Markson. Not quite as abstract and infinitely more fun.